


The Dead Are All Living

by Neelh



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Paranoia, Suicide Attempt, attempted self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:15:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5493569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stan could have punched himself for letting them get into that sort of trouble; for being so small-minded that he ignored all of the signs that they were in more danger than usual.</p><p>When it came down to it, everything that had happened was Stan’s fault. A thought crosses his mind and settles in his chest, like a heavy stone.</p><p>It would all have been better if he wasn’t born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dead Are All Living

Stan stands with his hand over the Time Wish. The twins, Dipper and Mabel, his kids, they’re both staring at him with large eyes and waiting. Waiting for him to make his decision, to get anything he ever wanted from the world. They look worse for wear than usual, moreso than usual, anyway, and Mabel said something about a gladiator tournament in the dystopic far future with someone called Blendin Blandin, who had gone off to fix some time anomalies nearby. Stan could have punched himself for letting them get into that sort of trouble; for being so small-minded that he ignored all of the signs that they were in more danger than usual.

But now he had the means to fix it all; to choose anything to fix. If he were a less selfish man, he would maybe stop all wars from ever occurring again, or solve world hunger, or fix the corrupt systems that poison the world. But Stanley is selfish, and he takes and he takes and he drains and he bleeds everyone dry, like some sort of leech or the world’s ugliest vampire.

Stan is not stupid. He knows that he has made connections in his life. He knows that if he died, the kids would be sad, Soos would be inconsolable, and Wendy would probably cry, at the loss of her job if anything. And Stanford… Well, he’d be stuck God knows where on the other side of that portal, never able to get back home because of Stan’s dumb mistake. For a few seconds, Stan considers going back to that point and not pushing Ford. Then again, he’d probably just mess up again. He can’t remember much of the fight, but he remembers blind fury. Something else would inevitably go wrong, and it would be Stan’s fault.

So instead, he could go back to thirty, forty odd years ago, when he was living out of his car and barely surviving, though always finding a reason to walk away from the railing of the bridge. Though this time, he would tell that young Stan that no, there’s nothing left, there’s nothing he has, to just do everyone a favour and jump into the opaque brown water that barely looks real in the darkness.

But then Ma, who still cared about him back then, how would she feel when there were no more irregular calls from unknown numbers? How would she feel when she tracked down the name Stanley Pines and eventually found a John Doe from last year that nobody had cared about enough to store the ashes anywhere? Would she tell Ford? How would he feel?

Stan hopes that, in this theoretical alternate future that he is vaguely considering, Ford weeps. He hopes Ford weeps and is wracked with guilt, because he couldn’t get his head out of his ass for long enough to spare a thought for his little baby brother, only fifteen minutes younger yet gone from this world so soon.

Fuck that guy. He deserves misery.

Stan sighs internally. Ford never deserved anything Stan did to him. When it came down to it, everything that had happened was Stan’s fault. A thought crosses his mind and settles in his chest, like a heavy stone.

It would all have been better if he wasn’t born.

He says this quietly, the words slipping out like silk. They feel like lilies; like flower petals. Something like that, anyway. But it is a solution that he has craved his entire life, somewhere deep inside of him, and it is now so close to his reach. He hears Mabel shout, he hears Dipper cry, but those sounds are outside of him; away from his bubble of clear serenity. There is only one thing he thinks of, now, in that slow moments when his hand reaches for the Time Wish.

Someone grabs his arm and he blinks away from his reality.

 

-

 

The first thing that Stan is aware of is that he is breathing. There is air, and when he opens his eyes, there is light. He looks around, gradually taking in the sights around him. There’s striped walls, a fluffy carpet, a squishy patchwork sofa to his left, an orange armchair next to it, and a huge fireplace, surrounded by a shimmering marble mantelpiece. The fire crackles, shining lilac and fuchsia. All over the place, little knick-knacks and pieces of tat are scattered. However, the most important thing is that there are no windows or doors. Everywhere, the walls give no insight as to what might be lurking outside, if there is any such thing.

Suddenly, there is a poof of pink glitter, like the smoke bombs Stan uses to distract people, and a tall woman with multi-coloured hair in a long fishtail braid appears. She wears a long skirt made of about ten different types of fabric and a halterneck polo shirt, which was a fashion choice Stan has never before seen on anyone.

“Where the fuck am I?” he asks her, scowling.

“Oh, this? It’s a section of my Mindscape, so basically, we’re in my brain now. It’s pretty cool, right? Dipper did all of the nerdy stuff, so we’ve got some time for me to get you up together before I take you back to your time.”

The woman babbles on in that familiar tone, and Stan takes a few more moments than usual to put the pieces together. When he does, he grabs the woman’s arm. It’s scarred, with a few fading burn marks, and Stan feels even more guilt pool in his stomach.

“Mabel?” he croaks.

“The one and only!” she grins back, winking with a painfully glittery teal eyelid. “It’s me, your great-niece from the future!”

Stan shakes his head. “What the… How… Holy crap, sweetie, how much did I have to drink?”

“Er… This is the first summer, so nothing, I think?” she says. “But I bet you’re wondering how I got here!”

Stan is silent. Mabel takes this as assent.

“Okay, so you’re gonna go through some really bad shit,” she says, tone becoming slightly more sombre. “But Dipper and Grunkle Ford – well, mostly Grunkle Ford, because Dipper’s busy with Media coursework – they worked on basically making some kind of dimension hopping thing that only works in the Mindscape, which is basically inside your brain but more physical? Metaphysical? I don’t know; I’m not the smartypants. But anyway, you want to erase yourself from existence, right?”

“Yeah…” Stan says quietly. “Wait, what? Grunkle Ford? Did I… Did I-“

“You did!” Mabel grins. “But we’re getting sidetracked. You… You wanna go ahead and basically delete yourself, right? Hit undo on the big document called life. Off yourself in a roundabout way. Because, well, it’s not my place to judge, but that is an awful idea.”

Stan winces as she talks. She’s not wrong, but it kind of hurts to hear her talk about, well, _that_ , in such a casual tone of voice.

She continues as if she hasn’t seen, judging by how she’s guiding him to sit down on the sofa with her, she probably hasn’t. “Well, yeah, I get how you feel, and why you feel like that. I mean, I’ve felt the same before, bu-“

“ _What_?” hisses Stan. His voice is a lot lower and more threatening than he intended, but there’s no going back now. “What do you mean, Mabel?”

She looks away from him, staring into the fire. “Well, I mean that I… Well, it’s a long story, and I’ve already told you too much about the future. I can’t tell you this. It’s… Well, it’s kind of big.”

“Bigger than Ford?” says Stan, raising an eyebrow incredulously.

“Surprisingly, yeah,” Mabel replies. “Anyway, we’re getting sidetracked. Train of thought coming into the rumination station!”

“We were talking about my mental issues,” Stan grunts.

Mabel beams. “Yeah! You want to, well, not die, but remove yourself from the picture. Like, _forever_. And that’s a really terrible idea, Grunkle Stan.”

“Says the girl who travelled back in time to stop it from happening,” he sighs. “Why do you kids have to weasel your way into everything?”

“Because we love you, Grunkle Stan, and nothing in the world can stop that!” says Mabel. “But yeah. I’m going to show you what would have happened if you were, well, not erased from time but miscarried early in your mother’s pregnancy while Ford wasn’t. Otherwise, it would be a universe where your embryo never split and made you both into separate people, and you would have been neither Stan nor Ford. It’s weird.”

There is a long pause, where Stan tries to think of something to say, but by the time he gets a vague idea of a question, or a witty one-liner, or something, _anything_ , to ask Mabel, she grabs his hand.

“Scene change!” she yells, and a hundred thousand party poppers explode over the room.

 

-

 

Stan blinks and shakes his head, finding himself somewhere he never expected to see himself again. That oblong little room in New Jersey, where a bunk bed and a blanket fort once stood, is now fairly empty. There is a single small bed pushed into the corner, a bookshelf crammed with science fiction and academia, and hardly any toys. The thin curtains are drawn, and the only light in the room comes from the orange-yellow streetlamps outside.

“What the heck, Mabel?” he hisses, turning to face the woman sprawled on the little bed with the plain sheets. “Where are we?”

“We’re in an alternate universe that’s connected to my brain,” Mabel explains, shrugging. At least she might be shrugging. It’s kind of hard to see, with the darkness and all. “So this is basically a reality in which you weren’t born. Somewhere in the multiverse, this is a thing, and-“

The door swings open and a small Stanford walks in. He can’t be older than fourteen, with a spotty face and brown hair combed down to hide his greasy forehead. In his small polydactyl hand, he grasps one of Ma Pines’s old meat knives.

“Stanford, what are you doing?” Stan shouts, trying to grab his twin. But his hand slips past by an inch, and his legs freeze up. He swears loudly, wrapping his arms around his body as though his innards are about to fall out, which he _does_ feel might, in fact, happen.

The boy sits on the bed, phasing right through Mabel. The sheets sink under Ford as Mabel floats upwards. He rolls the knife over in his hands, watching the metal blade flicker with reflected light. Stan stumbles over to him, trying to hug him, trying to say that everything’s okay, but he can’t. He can’t be heard, he can’t communicate, and he _can’t hug his brother_.

And Ford just watches the knife.

Eventually, his face steels with resolve and his grip tightens around the handle. He holds up his empty left hand and clenches it into a fist, save for his pinky finger, which sticks up like a broken radio antenna. He lefts the knife, he holds it to the inside of his knuckle, and he presses down. It’s not hard enough to break the skin, and Stan lets out a sigh of relief for a moment, before Ford rolls his sleeve up and stares at the pale inside of his forearm.

Stan swears again, biting his lip. “Ford, no,” he tries to say, but all he manages is a pathetic whimper.

But nevertheless, Ford puts down the knife. He slides it under his bed and rolls over to face the wall before falling asleep.

 

-

 

“What the fuck was that?” Stan hisses as the scene fades, and the room in Mabel’s Mindscape flickers in around them, like some old movie on a damaged VHS.

“That was Grunkle Ford, age thirteen, if he didn’t have you,” says Mabel. “He doesn’t go ahead with it, if you’re wondering.”

Stan shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut before glaring at Mabel. “That’s not what I meant!” he shouts. The room around them turns completely dark. “What was that supposed to do? Make me feel, I don’t know, _guilty_? I ruined his life in literally _every other way_ , Mabel!”

Mabel’s eyes widen. “No, Grunkle Stan! I wanted to show you how important you are. You need to know this, so please, just let me show you. I promise you, there’s only a couple more stops, then I’ll send you back to the moment I took you from.”

Stan exhales through his nose. “Fine. But only because you’re doing the puppy eyes.”

“Wait, I’m doing that?” she says. “Shit!”

 

-

 

The scene fades in around them. It’s Gravity Falls; Stan knows this instantly. This particular place was redecorated fifteen or so years ago and got turned into a chain grocery store. But at this point, it has fallen into a state of dilapidation.

“So, this is what I changed?” he says. “What, is the store some kind of secret way for the Feds to spy on me?”

“Nope!” Mabel smiles with glittery pink lips, bobbing along like a rubber duck in a cardigan. “The economy in Gravity Falls is a lot worse, though. Seems a little tourist trap can make all the difference in the world. Or, you know, at least in the weirdest town in America.”

Stan follows his great-niece as she floats down the mostly empty street. They pass Soos’s grandmother’s house, which looks mostly the same. The flowers out the front, the lacy curtains, the fence and gate, they’re all still there.

“How… Is Soos doing okay? And Wendy?” Stan asks Mabel. He still walks on the ground, or at least imitates propelling himself gently from one foot to the other and obeying gravity. A beat-up old car zooms past.

“Oh, yeah, Soos works for Gideon now,” she says lightly. “Or, well, he did. There was an incident. Ford kind of realised what was going on, and he got his book back, and Gideon kind of went…” She makes a long fart noise with her mouth and hands, crossing her eyes and rolling them up and down.

“I see,” says Stan. “What about Wendy?”

Mabel shrugs. “She’s okay, I guess. She’s doing a logging camp, and now she’s one of the counsellors there.”

“She always did do well with kids,” he says, smiling. “I’m glad she’s making something of herself.”

They fall silent, walking along the roads, past old, familiar places that are now lonely and wrecked. The high school looks a lot grimier than Stan remembered from Soos and Wendy’s descriptions, and Mabel tells him that there are half as many students as before. Gravity Falls in this universe is… Well, Stan wouldn’t call it a shithole, but it had seen better days.

He tries to distract himself from the thoughts in the back of his head by counting birds. One, two, three crows, about seven pigeons, and a rather surprising golden eagle pass by his vision before he finally cracks.

“What’s up with you kids and Ford?” he asks. “Are you all, I don’t know, irrevocably messed up or something? I mean, you probably didn’t come down for the summer, but did you both just… Never come?”

Mabel frowns, and Stan finally realises that she’s been taking him to the Mystery Shack. Well, it’s just Ford’s house, because he never existed to fuck up badly enough to need it.

“It… It kind of sucks, Grunkle Stan,” she says slowly. She licks her lips then rubs them together, trying to recover any glitter lost to her tongue. “I’m not gonna lie, Ford’s kind of screwed up. There’s barely any timelines where he isn’t.”

There is a heavy pause as they stand beneath the trees. Mabel plays with her multi-coloured braid.

“Okay, so he’s _really_ screwed up!” she exclaims. “After, well, after something that happened in this timeline as well as ours, he couldn’t recover from the trauma of it. It’s not like he’s recovered in our universe, but he’s not as… He doesn’t really…”

A twig snaps, and both of their heads whip in unison to the origin of the sound. Two people are walking through the woods, carrying backpacks, and Stan knows who they are.

“Mabel, what year are we in?” he murmurs, as though he could scare the twins away by being too loud.

“ _Crap_ ,” she whispers back. “We’re six years in the future.”

This version of Mabel and Dipper are almost exactly what Stan had thought they would look like. Dipper takes after Ford in appearance, but with softer features. The cleft in his chin is barely pronounced, even though by this point in his life, Ford’s looked like a fully-fledged butt-chin. Mabel has a pixie cut instead of her long flowing locks, and they are both wearing knitted hats that are clearly made by her, if the patterns are anything to go by.

Mabel begins to babble, looking at Stan directly in his eyes. “Okay, so what I’ve figured out about these guys is that they’re, well, they’re a lot more distant than me and Dipper now, but they’re still super-close. Does that make sense?”

“Nope,” he squeaks.

“Good, it didn’t make sense to Dipper either until he broke the words down in a few seconds,” she says, still speaking as quickly as possible. Stan can feel the alternate twins moving, ever so slowly, across the grassy earth. “Anyway, Dipper kind of wanted to run around and learn stuff, and I wanted fun adventures, and when we became adults, we went up to Gravity Falls, which our Grandpa Shermie told our dad was where Great-Uncle Stanford went before he disappeared. Our parents didn’t want us to visit, but we did it anyway. It may have involved sneaking out of the house. But anyway, we got here, and then…”

“Damn, I’m hungry,” Mabel says. “This place looks pretty abandoned, d’you want to hang around here for a while and take some pictures for your nerd blog?”

“I’m not sure it’s abandoned,” Dipper says, trying the doorknob. “But it’s so dilapidated. I’m sure it can’t hurt to photograph the exterior,” he says, pulling out his phone.

The door swings open, revealing a man with a burnt face, wild and bloodshot eyes, and surprisingly neat clothing. “What are you doing?” he shouts, and no matter how much more croaky and gravelly it is than usual, Stan can always recognise his brother’s voice.

“We only wanted to take a picture!” Dipper says quickly.

“Yeah, your house is really creepy, and Dipper’s obsessed with creepy things,” the short-haired Mabel adds.

“How did you find this place?” he growls. “How did you find me? Are you here to stea-“

“Woah there!” Pixie-cut Mabel interrupts. “We came across here by accident. We’re not here to steal anything. Also, did you know that you have actual fairies and antelabbits-“

“Jackalopes,” Dipper wearily interjects.

“-in here?” Mabel continues as though she wasn’t interrupted at all. “Well, you probably do, and there’s probably more stuff, but anyway, I’m Mabel Pines, this is my twin Dipper, who are you?”

Ford’s eyes widen a little, like he has seen a ghost. “Come in, come in,” he says, turning away from the twins. His back is rigid, as though prepared for an attack, but something tells Stan that Ford is still fully aware of everything around him.

Stan follows his brother, watching his face closely. One of Ford’s eyes is blankly staring into space, and if not for the look of great focus, Stan would think he was half-blind. However, he has a feeling in his gut that there’s something else that he doesn’t know yet. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the alternate twins, Dipper and Pixie-Mabel, bicker in near-silence as they follow Ford further into the house. The door swings shut behind them, leaving the older Mabel with the rainbow hair to drift through the wall like a ghost.

“Well, we came here because we heard there was weird stuff,” Pixie-Mabel says, “and Dipper wanted to find stuff to help inspire his photography classwork, and I wanted to find stuff out. Plus, who knows what’ll happen to Dipper without me?”

“Mabel, stop telling this guy our life story,” Dipper whispers. “We don’t know him at all. Please, let’s go.”

“My name is Stanford Pines,” Ford says quietly. His voice carries enough status, however, to be heard clearly by the twins. “Forty years ago, I came to Gravity Falls to learn. What I found, however, was hell. There is nobody you can trust here, except for yourself and your own wits. Now _get out_.”

At the feral look in Ford’s eyes, Dipper immediately begins to back away, while Pixie-Mabel, stupid Mabel, loving Mabel, reaches out a hand. “I don’t know you, but you’re our great-uncle. Surely you can trust us?”

For a long moment, Stan hopes that those words will help, before Ford’s eyes narrow. “Get _out_.”

“C’mon, Mabel,” Dipper says, taking his sister’s hand. “We’re not welcome here.”

He leads her out of the house, their footsteps slowly fading as they get further away from Ford. They never stop until the front door thuds shut behind them. Stan and Mabel, his Mabel, his Mabel from the future, stay. They watch Ford in silence as he strides calmly to the kitchen and opens a cabinet. He pulls out a quarter-full bottle of scotch and grabs a glass from the drainer next to the kitchen sink. He pours himself a large amount of the liquid before swigging the remainder from the bottle and dumping it into the sink.

When he has made his way to the laboratory that would be, in Stan’s universe, the living room, he slouches into the chair in front of the desk. It’s made of dark wood, and though it may have been rather nice in the past, now it is such a wreck, Stan wonders how Ford writes anything on it. There are scratches, from gentle indents to giant gouges in the wood, some so deep as to reveal the light beech under the mahogany stains. There are some triangles that seem to have been etched, at first in pencil, and then furiously slashed at, probably with the penknife that lay inconspicuously on top of some of Ford’s papers.

Ford takes a long sip of his scotch as his eye seems to slide away, rolling halfway up to his eyelid. The other eye remained perfectly trained on the wall with a focus as sharp as a hawk’s. He leans forwards, his chest lying on the desk, and rubs his thumb over a small rock in the wall. It pops open, revealing a thin microphone on a telescopic pole. As he pulls it out towards him and switches it on, Ford takes another sip of scotch. He remains stony faced, watching the wall as though it could kill him if he didn’t kill it first.

“Eighteenth of July, the year Two Thousand and Eighteen. Log entry ten thousand five hundred and fifty. Today, two humans in late adolescence arrived at my residence. They were named Dipper and Mabel Pines and claimed to not only be related to me, but to have come looking for anomalies. Such a story would not only be statistically improbable, but also highly melodramatic. I believe that they may have done research on my life before posing as my relatives. There is far too much information used about me in order for them to not have. Anyone who has found my high school journals from Ma’s house would know that I have wished for a twin since I was born, and nobody comes to Gravity Falls anymore, not even for oddities. Nobody can know about the anomalies; nobody’s smart enough, nobody’s _good_ enough!”

There are a few more grunts of anger in between sips of scotch before Ford switches the microphone off and pushes it back into the wall. The fake wall rock clicks shut over it, and it is like the wall was never anything but a normal wall.

Ford stands, his glass empty, and returns to the kitchen. Stan remains where he was as he watched his brother speak to a microphone in an empty room. Mabel bobs around behind him like some kind of misplaced rubber duck, watching the events unfold, and _Stan can’t move_. It’s like his legs are stuck to the ground, blocking him from following Ford as his mind tries to process what has happened. Eventually, Mabel tugs at his suit sleeve.

“Grunkle Ford’s going upstairs,” she says in a detachedly friendly way that Stan isn’t used to hearing from her. “Do you want to follow him?”

“What’s he doing?” Stan asks, still staring at the desk and the penknife. What does Ford need a penknife for?

“Drinking, mostly,” replies Mabel. Still with that tone! Why is she doing that? And why, Stan asks himself, is it so damn creepy?

He knows why. He knows that tone and what it hides; he’s used it enough fucking times.

“Sure, why not,” he says, trying to inject some enthusiasm into his words in a desperate attempt at morbid humour. Mostly, he just sounds monotone.

The walk upstairs is different to what Stan remembers. The wood panels are more damaged and bare than Stan has ever seen them, even when he first moved in after the incident with Ford and the portal, and there is enough dust to give Dipper some kind of asthma attack. The floorboards don’t creak; but that rather obviously has more to do with the lack of weight being put on them than any maintenance.

Ford’s room would be a mess if there was anything in it. There’s a bed that contains a Ford, and a bedside table, and a chest of drawers, and not much else. A window, some curtains, and a threadbare carpet that looked awful with the peeling wallpaper. A quick peek under the bed confirms Stan’s suspicions of a booze stash.

At some point, Ford had started chugging down the scotch as though his life depended on it, still pouring it into the glass with slightly less steady hands each time. Stan watches with morbid fascination as Ford repeats the same actions he took, that his father and mother took, that he hopes to every possible deity above and quite a few below that Dipper and Mabel will avoid.

Speaking of Mabel, she was leaning through the window, probably sticking her head out to look at the view.

“Why did you do this?” Stan says, mostly to himself at first, before he raises his voice. “Why did you do this?”

“Huh?” Mabel says, leaning back into the room. She continues leaning back until she has floated over to Ford’s bedside table. “Were you talking to me or Ford?”

“You.”

Stan’s voice is low. He knows this is Mabel. Those clothes, that unfaltering happiness, that’s all Mabel. He knows his little girl. But Mabel doesn’t hide a bitterness behind her smiles. And yeah, she can sometimes make inappropriate jokes or be far too casual about important things, but those are traits they share, and they always know when to cut it out.

“Why did you do this?” Stan repeats.

“What do you mean” replies Mabel with her big, brown, teal-covered eyes.

“This!” He gestures at Ford, who has moved onto whiskey. “Why are you showing me all of this? What’s the point? Is this, is this some kind of joke that I’m not getting?”

Mabel’s face falls. “Why would this be a joke? I’m being serious, Grunkle Stan! We all are. Me, Dipper, and Grunkle Ford, we’re all trying to make things better.”

“How is _this_ better?” Stan shouts. Mabel jolts, and Stan feels a pang deep in his gut but buries it with anger. “How is seeing my brother drinking himself to death for reasons that I don’t even know going to stop me from wanting to… _Fuck_. I… Damn it, Mabel, why are you doing this to me? I… I don’t want to _be_ here, isn’t that a good enough reason to leave me alone?”

“No,” Mabel says, shaking her head. “No, it wouldn’t, Grunkle Stan, because I… I can’t leave you alone, because I’m scared that you’re going to leave, and I’m not sure what we would do if you did.” She begins to sniffle, but wipes her eyes on her cardigan sleeve. “And I wanted to make things better, but I’m just hurting you, aren’t I? And I’m scared that I’m forcing you to act a certain way and say certain things and feel certain ways and I want you to be happy, but of your own accord, and with us.”

“Yeah, you are hurting me,” Stan murmurs. “But don’t worry, please don’t cry, pumpkin, I know you just want to make me happy. I, I forgive you.”

“Really?” Mabel asks, looking up as her eyes sparkled with tears and hope. At some point they’ve ended up curled up on Mabel’s Mindscape sofa, in her little doorless room.

“Yeah,” Stan says truthfully. “I do.”

She hugs him tight for a few minutes that seem faster than they are. Or maybe it’s slower. After all, time is meaningless in both Mabel’s mind and the outside world. But eventually, she has to let go of him.

“Are you ready to go back to your time, now?” she asks, smiling far more wisely than a newly-minted adult should. “You’re not gonna, well, you know? You’re gonna stay safe and alive and existing?”

“Sure, sweetie,” Stan says. He tries to make it sound as genuine as he can, but his voice cracks with uncertainty.

“Pinkie promise?” grins Mabel, extending her little finger. Damn, for a woman so tall, her hands are still tiny as hell.

Stan groans at the phrase. “Mabel, you’re an adult now. Haven’t you grown out of thi-“

“ _Pinkie promise_ ,” Mabel growls, gently tapping him on the nose with her pinkie.

“Ugh, fine,” Stan says, hiding a smile as he links his little finger with Mabel’s. “I promise not to erase myself from time or otherwise off myself.”

Mabel’s smile could light up an entire stadium in that moment, Stan decides. The smile wanes, however, as she says, “Ready to go home now?”

“Yeah,” he says.

With another sad smile, Mabel takes his hand. “Stay safe, Grunkle Stan. I love you.”

“You too, Mabel, sweetie,” Stan says, before he feels himself return to solid ground.

 

-

 

Stan blinks, and he sees the twins standing in front of him. Not the ones from the screwed up alternate future, not the ones with the tall Mabel in the cardigan, but his twins. Dipper and Mabel with the pine tree hat and the hand-knitted sweater with _Meow Wow!_ emblazoned across the front. Another blink, and he realises that he’s on the porch to the Shack, the Time Wish still floating in front of him.

“Grunkle Stan, we just got teleported by a really big Dipper!” Mabel beams. Her smile is completely genuine, untouched by possible futures that could cause her misery. “He was showing off his birthmark and everything! It was _so cool_.”

“Mabel, it was embarrassing,” Dipper says, pulling his hat down further over his forehead. He’s blushing, though, and a tiny smile pulls at his lips.

“Anyway, have you decided on your wish?” Mabel asks. “Big Dipper said it was a good one.”

Stanley looks at the kids, at his hands, at the wish. Distantly, he hears birds sing, and some twigs crack from the forest, where two more faces eagerly watch him.

“Yeah, I have,” he says, as he lowers his hand to touch the Time Wish.

**Author's Note:**

> tbh i almost called this "it's a standerful life"
> 
> i'm pretty proud of this monster of a fic, even if i did type two thousand words that i had no memory of
> 
> please leave a comment if you liked this, if you didn't like it, found a typo, or if you're confused about anything


End file.
